I can't in any good faith really call this a bad game. It's certainly not a GOOD game. There's a lot of heart and soul put into the nooks and crannies, from Handsome Jack's great delivery, some of the interesting build variety choices, some of the speedtech, some really good abilities, some fun satisfying moments with the gunplay.

But like, on top of all of that is a whole fat load of garbage. There's a ridiculous amount of grind, a shitton of terrible writing, a whole lot of fluff and fucking about. I don't understand WHY it's a loot shooter, it doesn't really ever meet that goal of being one. I'm not really a big fan of diablo but there was more concise design choices for why that game is loot-ran, where loot here is a lot of fluff shit.

There's a good FPS here, it's just under a whole lot of gearbox shit. I do fully understand the appeal of why people play this game as much as they do, in fact in some ways the co-op play of it is recommendable on its own in the way most co-op anything is, but even still I can't in any faith keep playing this game past a few hours because it just numbs my mind. I don't think I'm ever really going to grasp the full appeal of this, but I guess I should be glad that people find fun in this game because there's never anything wrong with that.

Transcendental experiences are hard to fully capture by any medium, I find. It's not exactly an art that one can easily do, even when they have the right ideas in place. In that regard, I found ABZU to be pretty ok all things considered. It's beautiful for sure, soundtrack is pleasant, the sights and sounds certainly engage me for about an hour. But, maybe due to the limits this kind of shot in the dark is, or just due to my tastes alone, I was the opposite of 'gripped' past an hour in and all the way to the end of the game.

Even still, I certainly can say that if you think the concept of a beautiful underwater sim captivates you for quite a while, then there's no harm in picking ABZU up. I for one felt a very middling amount of enjoyment in this venture.

I love me my anti-capitalist breakdowns especially with an aesthetic this strong and a core puzzle idea so intertwined with said aesthetic that it itself requires large amounts of praise, but this puzzler in many ways underwhelmed me. A lot of it to me, is due to the difficulty or to be more clear, how obtuse solutions can be at times. And at the same time, the puzzles also become pathetically easy past the halfway point. I found myself more often than not going through the motions. I was certainly in the zone a lot of the time, it's incredibly competent even with the large amount of cracks in the seams that irk me, but any recommendation I can do of it comes with hesitation.

It's a competent goodish puzzler that mostly holds up due to incredible story meets gameplay systems, and I can recommend it just on that.

Despite his terrible concept of pacing, I honestly really enjoy Nomura stories for how it juggles concepts, especially relating to this one. It's a very interesting story surrounding memory this time around, leading to quite a few emotional moments that left me satisfied. It also still holds a lot of that KH charm, as well as some boss fights that are a bit interesting on their own.

That being said that's where the praise stops, the gameplay here is NOT good. In fact I'd say it's anything other than that. Other than the basic enjoyment of deckbuilding, the combat here is some very weak idea of spacing, then spamming either your broken deck setup (because ReChain has awful card balance), or just any set of attacks and you'll be fine either way. It's not even visually pleasant to fight which is something the series tends to be good at in spite of the lack of depth in most of its areas. The Riku story side does offer a neat twist in that the decks are prebuilt so the balance is fine tuned, but without the enjoyment of creating your own deck it's actually worse for it because Riku's decks are not fun to play around with either, other than the initial fight with each deck understanding where the card combos are.

It probably hurts that I tried out Slay the Spire this year and it makes this game a pile of trash. (4.5/10)

Yoko Taro is somewhat of a narrative genius in terms of crafting concepts together and creating strong well done storytelling that actively reflects the themes here of humanity and perspective. It's something I think Automata does better, but what's here is actually still excellent. It's terribly paced, the entirety of Ending B/C routes is awful to do, even with its new perspectives. But it's genuinely good, scenes like the text adventure in the silent woods details how fantastic Yoko Taro is as a writer.

The gameplay on the flip end, is mostly awful, and that's mostly due to the limitations the game's thematic messaging entails (the enemy designs are forced to be simple and get more complex much later to reflect the rebuilding of the shadows' own humanity) and also due to Yoko Taro being considerably awful as a game designer to make something engaging. There IS actually depth to NieR's mechanics, but the kinesthetics of every single hit you do is so criminally awful that the only reason I don't say it's the worst kinesthetics of a game ever is because Drakengard exists and he made that too. Combine bad game feel with a series of repetitive encounters, a pacing that overstays its welcome, and having to do the game at least halfway through three times and you get a disgusting experience. The saving grace to its combat is genuinely well designed boss fights, which do a great job of creating challenging bullet hell waves you have to have key understanding of spacing to get through unscathed.

It's worth suffering through, though. There's so much good here tied to its thematics and narrative storytelling that I don't regret playing it. It's just the activity of PLAYING it in general is so decrepit.

Weirdest conclusion I came to is that this should've been a cinematic platformer.

No seriously, it's not like this game's good at anything else. They ripped every ounce of legitimate depth the mechanics have, offset's gone, mashing is the name of the game, enemies are missing a lot of telegraphs and the enemy design in general is piss-poor. The pacing is off, the developers who care about the gameplay are gone, the boss design is clearly set for cinematics and nothing else because your toolset is always incredibly limited and not interesting to fight. What do you have left?

The aesthetics are wonderful, the music is killer, the platforming is actually not too shabby thanks to stuff like After Burner and Witch Twist. I feel giddy whenever a cinematic lets me do the BEEG climax button thing and mash an angel or devil into a nice fine pulp. In fact a lot of the cinematic timing is on point, when the clearly underbaked story isn't rearing its head.

It's a shame to see, I quite liked Bayonetta 1.

Coming off of a VN that hosted incredible characterization and ridiculously good writing with each route ending on a very satisfactory note is a pretty tough challenge. Somehow Front Wing managed to do that so gracefully it was genuinely surprising to me every time, even though it hit a couple snags.

The biggest strength Labyrinth of Grisaia offers is in each of its "After" routes taking place after each route for the titular Grisaia characters. This strength is powerfully written romance, offering genuine continuations of each character's lesson and selling each relationship as one that's believable and heartfelt. Every single emotional scene lands on all cylinders and carries a strong message to come home with. A lot of it will personally come back in my head as I think about my own current relationship. From Sachi and Yuuji's relationship issue, that being that their goals in said relationship works against each other, to Michiru's internal fight at attempting a date to be affectionate towards the person she loves, it's all written and structured incredibly well. The general writing prose hasn't taken a hit either, dialogue between characters and how events play out is still done fantastically.

It's not all bangers though, a couple routes spring to mind at being either unnecessary or straight up bad. Yuuji's Past, the route that seems to be the most advertised, is actually probably the worst offender. I didn't enjoy it the least, but everything about it covers very little and ends up as incredible filler. And I really mean filler, there's an entire 1/3 of it that didn't need to exist, some of it serving no purpose but to be sequel bait for Eden of Grisaia. Amane's After route was also very bland, probably because Front Wing wrote themselves off there as Amane's Fruit of Grisaia route left no stone unturned.

Despite these couple issues, I recommend getting Labyrinth of Grisaia if you're looking for incredibly competent romance storytelling. Of course, you have to play Fruit of Grisaia first which is fine because Fruit of is still better.

It's a very short venture, but Analogue: A Hate Story is a pretty good dive into cultural abuse and societal issues around patriarchy. In those ways it's excellent in terms of brutally describing the situation where a fish-out-of-water is thrown into a disgusting cage that ebbs away her freedom. It also juggles a couple themes regarding hate and understanding each other, although not nearly as fleshed out. Which is really my only endemic issue, it's a bit too simple. Both characters have motivations and opinions on the subject but neither is really fleshed out personality wise, it's very safe.

Even still, I do recommend Analogue: A Hate Story as a nice quick read.

Hitman 2 is a stealth game dead set more on planning out routes through its intricate spectacularly structured level design rather than depth in execution. Which works to its benefit most of the time, it's wrapped in a very goofy-serious aesthetic where guards are easily distracted and targets can be killed in satisfying and very grandiose ways. Levels like Paris and Hokkaido, to Miami and Mumbai, are all excellently done. The big issue primarily is that in general you are playing 3D pathing and nothing else, your options for stealth are limited to either distractions or disguises and playing stop/go with the lights/guards. In that way it's not very engaging for me, although it does pay off whenever I route perfectly with stealth suit only to get to my target. But challenge runs that use that pathing to its extreme is really all that I found myself squeezing out here unfortunately. That being said, if excellent planning is all you need, Hitman 2 provides a large canvas for you to dynamically take down a huge series of targets. (7.5/10)

I can't in good conscience call this a good Pokemon game even if it barely keeps the fundamentals of its combat afloat. Although arguably, Fairy type was incredibly unbalanced during Gen 6 competitive and still is even so now, and Mega Evolutions were a complete bust in either devaluing a shitton of the meta or by making this game pathetically easy. So maybe I can say it breaks the fundamentals at least partly.

Even still, a ridiculously shallow attempt at a story with a region that has no real sense of its identity thanks in no small part to having the "everyone is here" nostalgia bait from all past regions of a Pokemon roster, and no aesthetics identity bar a few areas (seriously isn't this supposed to be France??) and a bleh soundtrack should be enough to deter most people who like this series. And if that doesn't set any interest in fucking flames, then maybe how this is by in large the easiest entry other than Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire with the most pathetic balance I've seen, and it's not even Exp. Share's fault, that's actually fine! They just throw all the good mons your way and have the shittiest teams!

I'm very tempted to call this a bad game in general, but it manages to still have a soul at times, although barely. It's certainly a Pokemon game and it has the amalgamation of features people expect from it. It doesn't royally break apart a good enough structure to make a solid enough rpg. It's meh, I still don't recommend anyone play it.

Look

I was in a nostalgic mood and I figured that playing the games' versions of the story would be better than watching the show or rereading the manga because it takes less time, it's literally a cliffnotes version. Also the show gets really shit.

It's fine, the combat is flawed in structure thanks to how substitutions work but the fundamentals capture the entire Naruto idea, the aesthetics are faithful if a bit low budget a lot of the time, it gets a lot of emotional moments right on the money and also kind of oversimplifies some other moments. It also helps that Storm 2 covers the best arc from the show and has a lot of the narrative core that worked still, even if it's cut down for time.

They iron out the kinks in the later games but what's here is a decent satisfactory fanservice package. I'm part of a small audience that's going to enjoy this game and recommending it to those not in this group would be silly.

Let's get this out of the way, P4G is NOT a well written story.

It has terrible pacing, it moves along at the pace of a slug on sedatives, and even besides that pacing the way the storylines are threaded together is weak and only makes true on its thematics rather than the character studies it teases, as those end up only two dimensional at best on the surface. Also the combat is decent at best.

That being said, other than the main story, I had a blast playing Persona 4 Golden. That 100% has to do with its enjoyable fluff and understanding of its main tone, "Joy", which Golden helps substantiate further. The dialogue between characters here goes from funny and endearing to incredibly engaging. For the most part, it doesn't take itself seriously at all, and it's all the better for it. The characters themselves are surprisingly well developed in their social links, which has always been the backbone to the nu-Persona games when the main story drags to a halt anyway.

That sounds contradictory that the main story has them two-dimensional where the side quests don't, and that requires a bit of explanation. The main story makes the characters face their inner selves but it's done in over the top black/white ways where they all quickly accept that this self is part of them with little fanfare. It's even worse, when the characters specifically code themselves in queer culture before backing the fuck up on it and waving its hands like it doesn't matter. It even has a couple full on homophobic scenes. The social links, however, have them actively evaluate their own selves and seek improvement. It also helps that it ebbs fuck societal roles for each one, but isn't close minded as to say that you're wrong if you decide to go along a route society expects from you (i.e. Yukiko). This society deciding how everyone's perspective is skewed towards one the consensus created is in-of-itself interesting if somewhat poorly executed by the time the credits roll.

That's where P4's heart lies, in its personality, characters, and themes, rather than its story and sequence of events. It's great in that, and even goes as far as to rewrite the perspective of a lot of its shortcomings in so bad it's good ways. I mean, with how garbage Marie is, what other choice do you have?

It's fucking Minecraft

But in serious real hard hitting critique prose that we all clearly want to describe Minecraft, it's an excellent game despite its roots being not so interesting. What I mean by that, is that the survival game isn't good, at least at its base. It's meh at best, no matter how you slice it, Minecraft survival doesn't have anything interesting to it. Iron armor is busted for most encounters, shields are broken, the progression is incredibly quick, hunger is a complete non-issue.

Does that actually matter though? People aren't generally playing Minecraft unmodded at this day and age, and the vast majority of the appeal for Minecraft is its sandbox. And with that, it's one of if not the best sandbox for creative content out there. It's incredible what the options for everyone are, with the full server list of this day and age spiraling from PvP servers to recreations of massive cities, to full blown mod support that doesn't even need to bring in new assets to work in interesting ways. The command blocks do a lot of that heavy lifting, and the redstone systems in the game have created incredible ingame contraptions.

At its retrospective core, Minecraft is no longer a survival game (because really if it was it would be a shit one). It's entirely what any person can make of it, and that ceiling of what you can create is still being extended. (9/10)

Edgy

That's all the game is really, edgy schlock draped over an uninteresting open world with uninteresting mashy combat and a very by the numbers bleh story that I honestly felt a huge drive to just not watch the cutscenes after a half hour in.

The movement's cool, that's the game's biggest saving grace and its only clear positive. Movement is fluid and has mechanical depth to it, it's like Spiderman 2 but with more mechanics to it other than web slinging feeling good. If it wasn't for this movement I'd probably say the game is bad.

It's fundamentally average overall, and i'm not going to put my time in anymore than I have. (4.5/10)